Famed contemplative hermit Thomas Merton wrote in his journal in the mid 1960s, ‘Should a hermit like Bob Dylan? He means at least as much to me as some of the new liturgy, perhaps in some ways more. I want to know the guy. I want him to come here, and I want him to see one of my poems.’(p. 107) And after hearing Dylan’s album Blonde on Blonde, Merton pronounced, “One does not get ‘curious’ about Dylan. You are either all in it or all out of it. I am in his new stuff.” (p.2) Robert Hudson has written a book that seems tailor made to my interests, it’s call The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966. This book is for every Merton fanatic, Dylanphile, and those whose ears perk up at the calling of the artist as a contemplative vocation. A master wordsmith, a recognized Bob Dylan scholar and a member of the International Thomas Merton Society --  Robert Hudson is the perfect person to have written this book. In our conversations we’ll unpack Bob Dylan’s meteoric impact on Thomas Merton, wonder about Dylan’s awareness of Merton, share a playlist of songs to go along with this book and so much more. I’ve been waiting for a book like this my whole life, and Hudson breathes poetic life into the retelling of the intersection of Bob Dylan, Thomas Merton and the summer of 1966.

The first time I hung out with songwriter extraordinaire Del Barber was back in 2005 when he drove me from Calgary, Alberta to Winnipeg, Manitoba. I fell asleep almost immediately after he turned the ignition, waking hours later confused and unsure which Canadian prairies we were in the middle of. Del told me I snored. I apologized. He said he didn’t mind. The only other conversation I remember from that drive was about the sacredness of wine in various religious traditions. This would be the first of many long stretches on the highway together. This was back in the days when I believed ol Robert Keen that ‘the road goes on forever and the party never ends’. In 2015 when I heard one of my favorite songwriters, Del Barber, was going to be playing the fabled SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas--I knew I had to be there. So, I called up my pal Del Barber to see if he would have any time to bounce around Austin between shows if I made the drive from Albuquerque. He said he would, and even secured me a free pass to the festival. With spirits high, I told my wife about my upcoming travels plans to go hear Del play. Coolly, she responded, ‘that would be fine--if you want to miss the birth of our first child.’   Del Barber writes songs that walk around with you, tells stories about your past or is it your future, he pulls back the curtain on the mystery of being human for few minutes while you catch your breath. Del Barber is a Juno award nominee and winner of other music awards that are likely propping open a porch door somewhere. It’s not that Del wouldn’t be grateful for the prestige, he would be and probably is, but he’s just too grounded to make a fuss over such accolades. In our conversation today, Del and I cover the music and books that shape him, why it’s even more important to live out a dream once you are a parent, how when we were first friends I gave him a test to see if he would understood the wise words of Greg Brown, his connection with the prairie and city landscapes, and his upcoming 5th studio album ‘Easy Keeper’. ‘Easy Keeper’ is the first album that he’s reached out to his community of fans to help raise the resources to fund a record. Since I am a card-carrying member of that community of fans, I urge you to pledge some of your hard-earned dollars to support an independent artist such as Del Barber and so you can get your own copy of his upcoming album ‘Easy Keeper’. When the album drops, you’ll thank me. So there are a couple of ways you can get your mitts on a copy of ‘Easy Keeper’, by going over to Del's Kickstarter or by going to the show notes for this episode at Contemplify.com. Follow Del Barber on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and DelBarber.com.

“This bold recovery of a long-forgotten path to prayer, expertly situated in its historical context and made accessible for modern-day believers, makes for absolutely fascinating reading--for the devout and doubtful alike." - James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage Imagine a wheel, a wheel with nesting concentric circles within it. Each circle holding the sacred text and ancient contemplative practice of a devoted community of monks. This sounds a lot like something pulled from Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but actually I am describing a book, and contemplative practice, called The Prayer Wheel: A Daily Guide to Renewing Your Faith with a Rediscovered Spiritual Practice. My guest today is David Van Biema. David and I explore a lot of terrain in this conversation. First we dive into the origins of why David became a religious writer (a story that reminded me of the film ‘O, Brother Where Art Thou?’, his discovery of the Prayer Wheel at an art gallery in New York, and how the Prayer Wheel can be a devotional practice for those in the Christian Tradition, plus much, much more. David is the author of Mother Teresa: the Life and Works of a Modern Saint and co-author of The Prayer Wheel: A Daily Guide to Renewing Your Faith with a Rediscovered Spiritual Practice. Van Biema worked at Time magazine from 1993 until 2008, the last 10 years as chief religion writer. He is currently writing Speaking to God: A Cultural History of the Psalms. You can learn more about David Van Biema and download an image of the the Prayer Wheel here. You can join the The Prayer Wheel discussion book on Facebook here.

‘What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.’ These 3 sentences come from my self-adopted contemplative grandfather, Thomas Merton.They ring so true for me that they were the basis for my thesis paper in graduate school. Why? Well, for me, they represent an embodied response to one of my essential life questions -  how does contemplation intersect with day-to-day life? So there is this contemplative rhythm in some monasteries of the Christian tradition called the Divine Office...or the Liturgy of the Hours. Today’s episode is going to be the first of a series I’ll be doing on the reimagining of the Divine Office into my own personal reflective interpretations as a contemplative in the world. The intention is to mark each of the Hours but in a form very different from their regular practice behind monastery walls. In other words, this is what a contemplative rhythm looks like in my particular life.

“Quoting the ancient I Ching, [Gail] writes about “coming to rest in motion.” She should know: a world traveler and social activist, Gail brings the steady calm she finds in the mountains to her work at peacemaking in a troubled world. ” - Elizabeth Lesser cofounder Omega Institute   I feel like an absurd lover torn between two beloveds. But rather than being drawn to different people, I’m torn between landscapes. My primary loves are the lakes and trees of Minnesota, but I have also deeply fallen for the desert mountains and mesas of New Mexico. And still if I drift into memories, I recall other landscapes that pierced my heart. When it comes to landscapes, Gail Straub is my people. Gail Straub is the author of The Ashokan Way: Landscape's Path into Consciousness. In the book and in our conversation Gail shares her wisdom on the dance of landscape and consciousness, her friendship with poet-philosopher (and one of my personal heroes) John O’Donohue, the role the Ashokan reservoir has played in her social activism, and her growth into a wisdom elder. The contemplative gift of The Ashokan Way is that Gail is a generative model of how to attune to a practice that requires focused and embodied attention to develop an intimacy with something larger than yourself. Gail Straub, co-founder and Executive Director of Empowerment Institute, is one of the world’s leading authorities on women’s empowerment. As part of this focus, she co-founded IMAGINE: A Global Initiative for the Empowerment of Women to help women heal from violence, build strong lives, and contribute to their community. This initiative applies the Institute’s empowerment methodology to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal “to promote gender equality and empower women.” IMAGINE initiatives are under way in Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan and South Africa.These are just some of Gail’s accolades. I am not going to list them all because after this conversation you should head over to her website, empowermentinstitute.net to learn more and possibly support her work.

I have only purchased one app for my phone. I find cell phones to be a necessary nuisance, helpful enough that I keep one, annoying enough that I keep it on silent. I don’t bemoan or resent anyone who has finally found love with their device. I get it. I just find it terribly distracting to the notes of life that I want to pay attention to. Then a friend forwarded me an article on a mobile app called WeCroak. I immediately realized I had been introduced to the perfect app. The gist is this, after handing over a buck to WeCroak, you download the app and then five times a day you receive the following notification: Don’t forget, you’re going to die. Five times a day. The only other feature beyond this mortal reminder is that when you tap on the reminder, a quote appears from a poet, philosopher, author, etc, such as: ‘Let me respectfully remind you: Life and Death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. On this night, the days of our life are decreased by one. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed! Do not squander your life.’ (Evening Gatha) My guest today is one of the creators of the WeCroak app, Hansa Bergwall. Hansa runs a PR agency and is a poet. Our conversation runs the gamut of from Hansa’s inspiration for WeCroak to quotes from RuPaul and Stoic Philosophers on death and impermanence, why I find this app to be most helpful in work meetings, and we try to crack the code why most of the users of WeCroak are under 35. You can learn more about WeCroak at wecroak.com and follow Hansa on Twitter (@buzznature).

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu (スティーヴン・マーフィ重松) is a subtle and winsome teacher. I had the privilege of being in the student seat last fall at a conference where he was teaching. The first words I remember him speaking were in reference to the Japanese word ‘ma’, which he translated as the space that is the space between things. Inviting each attendee to take on the practice of listening by feeling and holding the spoken words before responding. I remember letting out a big sigh of relief (and of celebration) and recognizing that he was not a typical presenter seeking to bombard listeners, but to create space. It takes a subtle artist to create space within another person, Murphy-Shigematsu is such a person. He expands the meaning of mindfulness into the embodiment of heartfulness, and structures his latest book, From Mindfulness to Heartfulness: Transforming Self and Society with Compassion in such a way to ground the reader in the basic elements of heartfulness and ways to cultivate heartfulness from which compassion action can spring forth.

Frank Ostaseski knows death. Not in a metaphorical or figurative way, but through concrete presence. Frank has held hands, laughed with, cried with and learned from those who were welcomed in the doors of the Zen Hospice Project during their final days on the planet. As you will soon find out, he honors them through magnanimous storytelling and wisdom from the depths of experience. Frank is a sought-after Buddhist teacher who co-founded the Zen Hospice Project in 1987 and founder of the Metta Institute in 2005 to train countless healthcare clinicians and caregivers and building a national network of educators, advocates and guides for those facing life-threatening illness. If that weren’t enough, he’s been highlighted by Oprah Winfrey, Bill Moyers and H.H. the Dalai Lama. And Frank was gracious enough to share his teachings and presence with us on Contemplify. Using his life-altering book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, as a launchpad we delve into Frank’s story, his mentor Stephen Levine, the power of the five invitations themselves, how those facing death became his greatest teachers, what he learned from the monsters in his son’s closest and so much more. Buy the book, read this book (if you’re in a book club, consider delving into it and using these discussion questions). You can learn more about Frank at fiveinvitations.com or follow him on Twitter (@fostaseski) or Facebook (@frankostaseski).

Michael Perry is a roughneck contemplative. A term that I am hoping he will half smirk at in self-recognition from his deer stand. We got together to talk about his latest book, Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy, a book that mind you, made me deeply reflect on my own life and laugh out loud while reading in crowded public spaces. A combination that doesn’t happen as often as I would like. So I wondered, what would a conversation with Michael Perry be like? Perry falls into the category of conversation partner that I admire, one who can belay between foolish laughter to gut-punch vulnerability in the span of a couple minutes. As a music lover, for me to hear the connection between Mike Perry, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Justin Vernon and Phil Cook made me giddy. To learn that Justin Vernon and Phil Cook  were once a part of Perry’s band was more than my ears could take. And this is just the tip of the conversation. Mike and I delve into how a kidney stone got him interested in the philosophy of Michel de Montaigne, why one might hesitate when they write an entire chapter about shame, the known and unknown seasons of marriage, and multitude of moments where Perry makes me snicker like a schoolboy. So pick up this book, Montaigne in Barn Boots, if you also like to philosophically bob and weave between laughter, tears and sighs of recognition. Or perhaps just like the term, roughneck contemplative. You can learn more about Mike at sneezingcow.com (yep, you read that right) or follow him on Twitter (@Sneezing Cow) or Instagram (@Sneezing Cow).  

You know that old story of a successful criminal defense lawyer who quits practicing law to start a bean to bar chocolate factory? Yeah...it’s a new story for me too. But that is the story of Shawn Askinosie. Shawn is a remarkable human being. Not because Oprah Magazine named him “One of 15 Guys Who Are Saving the World” or because Forbes named his small batch, award winning chocolate factory, Askinosie Chocolate ‘One of the 25 Best Small Companies in America’ (both of which are true by the way). It’s because Shawn holds a contemplative vision for his life and business to create a more just and loving world. Askinosie Chocolate is a direct trade business that profit shares with their partners, the cocoa farmers, from around the world. Shawn and his team are recasting how a profitable business can operate in the world with integrity, passion and humility. In this conversation you will get a taste for Shawn’s values as he shares about his experience as a Family Brother at Assumption Abbey, how he recognizes the relationship between joy and sorrow, the lasting impact of his 6th grade teacher, why he wanted Askinosie Chocolate to be direct trade, profit sharing and open book management from its inception,... and what the hell he means by the phrase, ‘It not about the chocolate, it’s about the chocolate. This is just a taste of Shawn’s deeply empowering book, Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul. You can buy the book, Meaningful Work, wherever beautiful books are sold. To learn more about Shawn visit (and order chocolate) at askinosie.com.